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Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism
Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism
Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism
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Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism

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Multiculturalism has been one of the dominant concerns in political theory over the last decade. To date, this inquiry has been mostly informed by, or applied to, the Canadian, American, and increasingly, the European contexts. This volume explores for the first time how the Australian experience both relates and contributes to political thought on multiculturalism. Focusing on whether a multicultural regime undermines political integration, social solidarity, and national identity, the authors draw on the Australian case to critically examine the challenges, possibilities, and limits of multiculturalism as a governing idea in liberal democracies. These essays by distinguished Australian scholars variously treat the relation between liberalism and diversity, democracy and diversity, culture and rights, and evaluate whether Australia’s thirty-year experiment in liberal multiculturalism should be viewed as a successful model.

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Release dateJun 1, 2008
ISBN9780857450296
Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism

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    Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism - Geoffrey Brahm Levey

    Chapter 1

    Multicultural Political Thought in Australian Perspective

    Geoffrey Brahm Levey

    The aim of this book is to explore how the Australian experience relates and contributes to political thinking about multiculturalism. Multiculturalism has been one of the dominant themes of research and reflection in political theory over the last fifteen or so years. Among other issues, attention has focused on how multiculturalism relates to liberal principles of individual autonomy, toleration, equality, and justice; where, and on what basis, the limits of liberal toleration should be drawn; and the implications of multiculturalism for current and emerging conceptions of citizenship. For the most part, these debates have been conducted at an abstract philosophical level or else have been informed by, or applied to, the Canadian, American, and, increasingly, the European contexts. Although Australia was, along with Canada, one of the first liberal democracies to commit to a national policy of multiculturalism, in the 1970s, political theory has devoted scant attention to Australia’s experiment in multiculturalism. The considerable scholarly literature on Australian multiculturalism has tended rather to come from cultural studies and the empirical social sciences. Indeed, it is fair to say that aside from the recent attention on the rights of indigenous peoples, Australian political theorists and philosophers have mostly shied away from multiculturalism and cultural rights as areas of study in general.¹

    Just why this should be so when such issues are of central concern to political theorists in Canada, the United States, Britain, and continental Europe is worth pondering. But whatever the reasons, the lack of interest is doubly unfortunate. First, from an Australian perspective, the work of political theorists addresses many of the issues that routinely figure in this country’s public debate over multiculturalism as a set of ideas and policies for managing cultural diversity. Multiculturalism in Australia has always had its critics. However, since the World Trade Center attacks in September 2001 and with the rise of militant Islamism more generally, public anxieties over the meaning, value, and implications of multiculturalism are today being voiced in Australia, as elsewhere, with particular stridency. Sober analysis of what multiculturalism is and may be in a liberal democracy like Australia, of the various arguments offered to justify it, as well as of its theoretical and practical problems, is needed now more than ever. Australian public policy and debate can only benefit from having the Australian experience situated and evaluated in light of more general arguments about multiculturalism, liberal democratic values, national identity, and citizenship.

    Second, from an academic perspective, multicultural political theory can in turn benefit from considering the Australian case. Early multicultural political theory was heavily influenced by the work of the Canadian political philosophers Will Kymlicka (e.g., 1989, 1995) and Charles Taylor (1994), both of whom were self-consciously engaged in searching for a just solution to minority claims as presented in the Canadian context, principally concerning the indigenous peoples and Quebecois. In terms of the sheer number of scholars and output of work, however, the center of gravity in multicultural political theory, as in so many other academic fields, is the United States. Yet such work comes with something of a self-imposed caveat: while American political theorists tend to generalize about liberalism and democracy based on American institutions and conditions, Americans also tend to believe as an article of national faith in American exceptionalism—the idea that the United States is uniquely unique or fundamentally different from all other polities and societies (Glazer 1999; Shafer 1991; Walzer 1992b).

    Thus it is appropriate that recent years have witnessed a growing wariness of the one model fits all kind of liberal theorizing. Especially in the case of multicultural political theory, there has been increased attention to the importance of particular historical and cultural contexts in responding to what may be the same or similar questions. A recent volume on multi-cultural citizenship, for example, attempts to chart what the editors call a European approach (Modood, Triandafyllidou, and Zapata-Barreo 2006). And Kymlicka himself has played a key role in regional inquiries into whether and how Western models of multiculturalism may have application in Eastern Europe (Kymlicka and Opalski 2001) and in Asia (Kymlicka and He 2005). Similarly, in his contribution to this book, Philip Pettit argues that there is no such thing as the nature of citizenship in general, only the nature of citizenship under one or another civic structure. As Martin Krygier notes in his comment on Pettit’s chapter, the same can be said of the nature of multiculturalism.

    If comparison and contrast are essential to the quest for understanding, as they surely are, then it is appropriate that the Australian case also be included in our store of political thinking on multiculturalism. Australia has had a generally successful experience with creating and managing a culturally diverse society based on liberal democratic norms. It also occupies an intermediate position—politically, institutionally, and culturally—between the dominant Western spheres of Old World Europe and the New World of North America, and thus affords a unique vantage point for considering wider debates on multiculturalism.

    This book, then, seeks to bring the Australian context into the discussion of multiculturalism in contemporary political theory. It critically examines the challenges, possibilities, and limits of multiculturalism as a governing idea in liberal democracies, with special attention to the Australian case. Some contributors draw on Australian examples to make or evaluate general arguments, some consider the implications of a particular philosophical argument for Australian democracy, while others evaluate official Australian multiculturalism directly. All, however, are concerned with the theoretical implications of Australia’s attempt to manage an immigrant-rich, culturally diverse population and thus address some of the central questions of concern to political theorists and liberal democracies today.

    In the remainder of this chapter, I will briefly profile Australia’s multi-cultural society and move to adopt multiculturalism as official policy; identify some normative features of the Australian policy; consider the Howard government’s apparent retreat from multiculturalism in its final year in office; and outline the contents of the book.

    MULTICULTURALISM FOR A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY

    Australia was home to a culturally diverse population even before European settlement. Indigenous Australians comprised hundreds of distinct tribal groups and languages. The First Fleet of European settlement in 1788 also included a variety of ethnic backgrounds among its assortment of officers and convicts. The gold rushes of the nineteenth century along with the opportunities of a new society attracted Chinese, Afghanis, and Italians, among others, in search of better lives. Religious intolerance at home saw German Old Lutherans establish a significant presence—and one of Australia’s renowned wine-growing regions—in South Australia from 1838. Nevertheless, multiculturalism as a political idea and public policy regime is a latter twentieth-century development. The term multiculturalism entered Australian parlance in 1973 following its introduction some years earlier in Canada.² Whereas Canadian thinking revolved principally around bilingualism and long-established cultural communities, multiculturalism in Australia developed as a response to post–World War II immigration.

    From Federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 until World War II, Australia dealt with cultural diversity fundamentally through exclusion. The first act of the newly established Australian Commonwealth was the Immigration Restriction Act (1901) or White Australia policy, which defined the country as an outpost of the British race. Under economic imperatives to populate or perish, the policy’s restrictive provisions were progressively loosened in the postwar period. The end of the White Australia policy was foreshadowed in 1966 when the Liberal coalition government admitted a small number of well-qualified people from Asia. However, the policy formally ended only in 1973, when the Whitlam Labor government removed all remaining vestiges of a racially discriminatory immigration policy.³

    By any standard, the ensuing transformation of Australian society has been remarkable. In 1947, the Australian population stood at 7.6 million. This included some 87,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (compared to an estimated 314,000 prior to European settlement), with the rest mostly the descendants of people from Great Britain and Ireland. Almost 10 percent of the total population was born overseas, with three quarters of these coming from the British Isles. As of the 2001 census, the Australian population had grown to 18.8 million. Now 22 percent of the resident Australian population was born overseas, and 43 percent was either born overseas or had one parent born overseas. These figures have continued to increase since 2001. Thus, for many years now Australia has been even more immigrant rich than the other major immigrant democracies of Canada (19.3 percent circa 2000), the United States (12.3 percent), and New Zealand (19.5 percent), and it far exceeds, in this respect, the former imperial powers of Europe now coping with immigration, including Britain (8.3 percent), France (10 percent), and the Netherlands (10 percent) (ABS 2001; OECD 2006). Apart from Israel, no other country has virtually doubled its population through immigration in the space of half a century. James Jupp (2003, and this volume) rightly cautions against overstating the cultural diversity associated with some of these figures. Although immigrants to Australia hail from some two hundred countries, as of 2006, the two main source countries of Australia’s overseas-born, for example, remain the United Kingdom (24 percent) and New Zealand (9 percent). By comparison, the main non–English-speaking source countries are Italy with 5 percent, and China and Vietnam each with 4 percent of the overseas-born (ABS 2004–5: 6).⁴ Still, overall it is clear that Lord Campbell of Croy had a point in offering a personal recollection in the House of Lords: My late wife once described [the United States] as the only country in the world where the majority of the population is homesick. They might dispute that in Australia.

    There have been significant changes also in religious affiliation. In 1947, 39 percent of the population identified themselves as Anglican, 21 percent considered themselves Catholic, and 28 percent aligned themselves with other Christian denominations and beliefs.⁶ By the time of the 2001 census, those declaring a Christian faith had fallen from 88 to 68 percent (21 percent Anglican, 26 Catholic, 21 other Christian). Those identifying with a non-Christian religion had climbed from 0.5 to 5 percent, with Buddhism (2 percent), Islam (1.5 percent), Hinduism, and Judaism (each 0.5 percent) being the main minority faiths. While Christianity remains the most common religion among the overseas-born, growing numbers of immigrants from Asia and the Middle East have led to a stronger presence of non-Christian faiths. Indeed, between the 1996 and 2001 censuses alone, the number of persons affiliating with Buddhism increased by 79 percent, with Hinduism by 42 percent, and with Islam by 40 percent. Perhaps equally significant is the growing secularity of the population, with a fifty-fold increase since 1947 in those citing no religious affiliation or beliefs, from 0.3 percent to 15.5 percent in 2001.⁷

    Officially, Australia is a monolingual country, recognizing English as the sole national language. However, in 2001, one in six Australians age 5 and above spoke another language at home. The majority of these (73 percent) were overseas-born, among whom the main languages spoken (in descending order) were Chinese, Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, and Arabic/Lebanese. Among the Australian-born (typically children of immigrants), the main languages spoken were Italian, Greek, Arabic/Lebanese, Aboriginal languages, and Chinese (ABS 2006: Languages).

    Like Canada and the United States, Australia explicitly managed its cultural diversity up until the mid-1960s through an assimilationist approach aimed at Anglo-conformity. This approach had more to do with declaratory expectations and the absence of provisions for minorities than with formal legal sanctions. Arguably, much more powerful was the informal censuring that an overwhelmingly Anglo-Celtic society applied to new immigrants who exhibited their linguistic and cultural difference too conspicuously. By the 1950s, some sociologists were warning that assimilationist policies and norms were exacerbating rather than alleviating the problems of immigrant absorption (Lopez 2000: 54–55). Government documents claim that a new policy approach of integration replaced assimilationism from the mid-1960s, where the settling and servicing of large numbers of immigrants were emphasized, rather than the loss of their original language, culture, and identity (DIMA 2006b). Beginning in the 1970s, multiculturalism developed as a series of tentative ideas and piecemeal reforms sponsored by successive Labor and Liberal coalition federal governments. Unlike Canadian multiculturalism, which emphasized linguistic and cultural maintenance from the start, Australian multiculturalism first took shape as a program of immigrant settlement and welfare support for people from non–English-speaking backgrounds or so-called NESBs (Jupp 1996; Lopez 2000). Some commentators nevertheless see in the multicultural approach during the Fraser government years (1975–83)—and, especially, in the Galbally Report (1978) that gave it direction—an emphasis on cultural pluralism, ethnic groups as distinct and homogeneous cultures, and a neoconservative inclination to privatize welfare services (Castles 2001: 808; Kalantzis 2000: 104). Ethnic Communities’ Councils were among the first nongovernmental institutions established to advance the multicultural agenda, beginning with the Victorian branch in 1974, followed by a New South Wales office in 1975. An overarching national association, Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA), was established in 1979. Publicly funded English-language instruction, translation services, immigrant resource centers, grant-in-aid programs to community groups, facilities for recognizing overseas trade qualifications, and the establishment of ethnic television were among the main initiatives of this early period.

    By the early 1980s, the ambit of multiculturalism had begun to be framed in terms of addressing all Australians rather than only immigrants and ethnics, and had crystallized around the themes of social cohesion, cultural identity, and equality of opportunity and access. By the end of the 1980s, the first overarching national policy statement of Australian multiculturalism—National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia (OMA 1989), inaugurated by the Hawke Labor government—identified four main planks: the right of all Australians to maintain their cultural identities within the law; the right of all Australians to equal opportunities without fear of group-based discrimination; the economic and national benefits of a culturally diverse society; and respect for core Australian values and institutions—reciprocity, tolerance and equality (including of the sexes), freedom of speech and religion, the rule of law, the Constitution, parliamentary democracy, and English as the national language.

    Subsequently, there have been two further national policy statements, A New Agenda for Multicultural Australia and Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity (Commonwealth of Australia 1999, 2003)—the latter a self-declared update of the former—both launched by the conservative Howard government.⁸ These documents have further refined the policy’s emphases and presentation of principles, although the 1989 provisions have essentially endured. If the Hawke government’s National Agenda advanced a social justice-cum-citizenship model of multiculturalism, the New Agenda put greater stress on national identity, social cohesion, and community harmony. Thus, for example, the policy was henceforth to be called Australian multiculturalism to better signal that our implementation of multiculturalism has been uniquely Australian (NMAC 1999: 3). There was increased emphasis on the obligations of Australians under the policy, as against their rights: what in the 1989 version were stated as limits after the cultural identity, access and equity, and economic efficiency provisions, were now positioned as the first plank of the policy. The National Agenda’s stress on the defining importance of Australia’s British heritage also was replaced in favor of our evolving national character and identity.

    The federal provisions on multiculturalism have their counterparts in each of the Australian states and territories and often in local governments as well. The states of New South Wales and Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory have each enshrined their multicultural principles and approaches to cultural diversity in legislation, while the other states and the Northern Territory have followed the federal governmental model and opted for governmental policy statements or charters.¹⁰ Indeed, in recent years, it has been state and local governments that have generally maintained the momentum behind Australian multiculturalism. The conservative Howard government (1996 to 2007) always had an ambivalent relationship to the policy (Kelly 1997). It is too early to say how multicultural affairs will be managed by the new Labor government under prime minister Kevin Rudd, elected on 24 November 2007. It is notable, however, that the new government has retained its predecessor’s removal of multicultural affairs from ministerial responsibility (as described further below), although it has reinstated the term and area at the parliamentary secretary level.

    A word is in order about the place of indigenous Australians in this discussion. Although official multiculturalism now applies to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, it also, to its credit, recognizes that their distinct needs and rights [should] be reaffirmed and accorded separate consideration (OMA 1989: 5). Unfortunately, this commitment—repeated in the New Agenda but not in Multicultural Australia—has seen little efficacious policy. For their own part, many Aboriginal people have resisted their inclusion under the policy, believing that this ignores their distinctive historical experience and undermines their claims and special status (Castles 2001: 809; Scott 2000). There now is a substantial literature on the political and legal recognition of indigenous Australians, examining such issues as land rights, self-government, treaties, political representation, customary law, and reconciliation (e.g., Behrendt 2003; Dodson 1995; Ivison, Patton, and Sanders 2000; Langton et al. 2004; Peterson and Sanders 1998; Povinelli 2002; Rowse 2002). For these reasons, this book focuses mainly on multiculturalism as it applies to nonindigenous Australians. Nevertheless, several chapters devote some attention to the situation of indigenous Australians, and Moira Gatens examines the vexing problem of the clash between women’s human rights and cultural group rights expressly in the context of Aboriginal customary law (chapter 9).

    NORMATIVE FEATURES OF AUSTRALIAN MULTICULTURALISM

    In recent years, political theorists have defended multiculturalism or, perhaps better, multiculturalisms on the basis of various principles and arguments, including identity and diversity; equality and justice; autonomy and liberty; democratic legitimacy; civil peace, inclusion, and the avoidance of harm; and economic and public goods (e.g., Benhabib 2002; Deveaux 2000; Gill 2001; Gutmann 2003; Habermas 1994; Galston 2002; Kymlicka 1995; Levy 2000a; Modood 2007; Parekh 2000; Reich 2002; Tamir 1993; Taylor 1994; Walzer 2004; Young 1990). The kinds of political recognition or cultural rights these arguments generate are similarly various, ranging over exemptions from standing law, public subsidization of minority cultures, symbolic recognition, special political representation, dual and multiple citizenships, intellectual-cum-cultural property rights, cultural defense in criminal proceedings, cultural and political autonomy, and even national self-determination (Levy 1997; Shweder, Minow, and Markus 2002). Other theorists have advanced expansive notions of cultural toleration, cultural autonomy, or minority self-government rather than cultural rights, as such (Kukathas 1997c, 2001, 2003; Nimni 2005; Shachar 2001; Swaine 2006; Tully 1995). The extent of the rights, toleration, and autonomy canvassed in these arguments in recent political theory far exceeds the cautious and pragmatic approach—as James Jupp aptly puts it in this book—of Australian multiculturalism.

    This much is evident from some attempts to distinguish multiculturalism from previous liberal approaches to cultural diversity. Joseph Raz, for example, has charted three sequential liberal responses to cultural diversity: toleration, which largely leaves minorities to live as they please as long as they do not interfere with the dominant culture; nondiscrimination, which protects the individual rights and liberties of all citizens by outlawing discrimination on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, and other group characteristics, and in so doing seeks to ensure that the common citizenship rights of liberalism are truly common; and finally, affirmative multiculturalism, which, Raz says, rejects the individualistic bias of the nondiscrimination model, recognizes the value of cultural diversity, and actively assists groups in maintaining their distinct cultures within the larger society (Raz 1994: 157–59).

    Raz’s synoptic account fails to capture key aspects of the Australian case. First, and perhaps most obviously, the longstanding White Australia policy suggests that, even beyond assimilation and Anglo-conformity, intolerance was in fact the initial dominant response in Australia (Kane 1997a: 542). Of more moment, Raz’s distinction between nondiscrimination and affirmative multiculturalism, although helpful, needs to be recast in locating the Australian case. As we will see, Australian multiculturalism:

    (1) centrally incorporates the traditional principle of nondiscrimination;

    (2) extends this principle and the individualistic bias of liberalism more generally to embrace cultural identity; and

    (3) affirms the value of cultural diversity, but again only on the basis of individualism.

    The National Agenda—the first national multicultural policy—will serve to make these points, but they apply equally to the two subsequent national multicultural policy blueprints.

    The National Agenda (OMA 1989: vii) identifies the following three dimensions of multicultural policy:

    cultural identity—the right of all Australians, within carefully defined limits, to express and share their individual cultural heritage, including their language and religion;

    social justice—the right of all Australians to equality of treatment and opportunity, and the removal of barriers of race, ethnicity, culture, religion, language, gender, or place of birth; and

    economic efficiency—the need to maintain, develop, and utilize effectively the skills and talents of all Australians, regardless of background.

    The first point to make is that the right to cultural identity constitutes an important departure from both assimilationism and mere nondiscrimination. People are free to express their distinct cultural identities in public as well as in private, without hindrance and with substantial help from the government. Of course, the policy goes on to stress that the right is subject to carefully defined limits.

    Another crucial limitation is that the right to cultural identity is ascribed to and exercised by individuals. The phrasing used throughout the National Agenda is deliberate: it is all Australians—that is, each individual Australian—who hold this right. Lest there be any ambiguity, the National Agenda states that Fundamentally, multiculturalism is about the rights of the individual (OMA 1989: 15). Cultural minorities qua groups as corporate entities have no entitlement. This qualification is of the utmost importance. It means that Australian multiculturalism remains committed to the liberal idea that the ultimate unit of moral worth is the individual, and it avoids one of the traditional liberal concerns about cultural and group-differentiated rights, namely, that the interests and rights of the individual are jeopardized in the interests of the group. In this respect, Australian multiculturalism follows closely the terms and reasoning of article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—to which Australia is a signatory—which states, in part, that "persons belonging to [ethnic, religious, or linguistic] minorities shall not be denied the right . . . to enjoy their own culture."¹¹

    One way of understanding the Australian right to cultural identity, then, is as an individual right to the free exercise of culture on the older liberal model of the free exercise of religion or freedom of worship, albeit one that has claims on public accommodation. So, for example, an individual may be entitled to wear his or her traditional garb or headgear even where standard uniforms are required, as in Sikhs who work for state railway services wearing their turban with the official badge in place of the conventional railway cap. Or individuals might exercise the right by observing certain rituals, such as securing time off from work to observe their festive holidays. Virtually all levels of Australian government, as well as many firms and businesses in private enterprise, now abide by codes encompassing these kinds of entitlements in their work practices.¹²

    There is, however, a certain kind of group right that is also compatible with the individualistic terms and practice of Australian multiculturalism. Group rights may be conceptualized in a collective as well as in a corporate sense (Jones 1999a, 1999b). The corporate conception of group rights ascribes a moral status to the group in its own right, and is akin to the solidaristic image of the citizenry that Philip Pettit discusses in this book. The corporate conception is often what people have in mind in objecting to group rights. As Peter Jones describes this conception, the right is held not jointly by the several individuals that make up the group, but by the group as a unitary entity: the right is ‘its’ right rather than ‘their’ right (Jones 1999a: 86). Australian multiculturalism clearly rules out such group rights. The concern is that granting powers, privileges, and immunities to cultural groups on this basis would both jeopardize their members’ common citizenship rights and compromise Australian sovereignty and political integration. These concerns also figure in the reluctance of Australian governments, to date, to consider Aboriginal self-government.

    Collective rights operate differently from corporate group rights. Here, the individuals comprising the group hold the right jointly, while the moral standing that grounds the right still belongs to each of the individuals. Unlike conventional individual rights, the interest of no single member of the group is sufficient by itself to justify the right and hence impose a duty on others (Jones 1999a: 85; Raz 1986: 208). Rather, a collective right arises where the accumulated interests of the several individuals comprising the group are necessary to put others under an obligation. In practice, we see such a collective cultural right recognized in Australia in the provisions, for example, covering state-recognized customary marriage and for establishing religious or parochial schools. In each case, while it is the interests of individuals that are being served, a community of members is required to give effect to the practice and to impose a duty of recognition on others.

    It is important to note that political autonomy or group self-determination may also be grounded in a collective rather than a corporate justification. This is, perhaps, most obviously the case with the kind of national self-determination that Australians themselves claim, namely, one justified in the name of all Australians, which is jointly held by them, and which respects, at least presumptively, their liberal democratic rights. The same collective conception underscores the considerable legal and political autonomy of the six states and two territories that, along with the Commonwealth government, constitute the Australian federal system. The states and territories enjoy their self-government rights, however, as historically developed, regional and administrative units. Again, what Australia has not entertained—bar for some modest self-management for the now-abolished Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC)—is a collective right of self-determination or self-government for ethnic and subnational groups in Australia.

    While the Australian right to cultural identity represents a significant departure from earlier practices of liberal democracies (assimilationism, toleration, nondiscrimination), it conforms to the moral ontology of liberal individualism. It does not so much break from liberal democratic norms as reinterpret and extend them. We see this innovation also in the second policy dimension—social justice. A traditional reading of the right to equality of treatment and opportunity would understand it to mean that people should not be denied offices and opportunities on the basis of their group characteristics, which is to say, on the basis of direct and invidious discrimination. Such a principle of nondiscrimination simply affirms, of course, the traditional liberal rights of citizenship, and has nothing per se to do with cultural distinctiveness or maintenance.

    Recognizing direct discrimination leads, however, almost ineluctably to recognition of indirect discrimination as well. According to the National Agenda, this kind of discrimination is unwitting and systemic and occurs when cultural assumptions become embodied in society’s established institutions and processes (OMA 1989: 15). Or as the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) puts it, indirect discrimination occurs when a practice or policy appears to be fair because it treats everyone the same, but it actually disadvantages more people from one racial or ethnic group.¹³ The social justice dimension addresses this concern through the removal of various group barriers. Like the right to cultural identity, the right to social justice more fully realizes, rather than breaches, liberal democratic norms and common citizenship rights. Thus, one finds even the United States, which does not have an official government policy of multiculturalism, endorsing similar provisions. For example, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, together with the Guidelines on Discrimination Because of Religion of the U.S. Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission, have been used as instruments for accommodating religious dress and time off for religious holidays.¹⁴

    In his vigorous critique of multiculturalism, Bristish philosopher Brian Barry (2001) argues that liberal multiculturalists misunderstand liberal equality. In insisting on state neutrality and common citizenship rights, liberalism does not pretend to be equally neutral toward all group traditions; rather, the point is to deny those groups that want to enlist state authority to impose their values on others. From an egalitarian perspective, cultural groups are not entitled to special treatment because all groups are free to deploy their energies and resources in pursuit of culturally derived objectives on the same terms (Barry 2001: 318). In recognizing indirect discrimination, however, Australian multiculturalism—like its counterparts elsewhere—notices how state institutions already embody and impose cultural values, and thus that not all groups are free to pursue their cultural objectives on the same terms. Further, it recognizes that alleviating indirect discrimination through special assistance or exemptions does not involve the state imposing minority cultural values on anybody.

    Like the right to cultural identity, the right to social justice can sustain a wide array of claims in which cultural attachments and convictions are at stake. Often the two kinds of rights will reinforce each other. However, it is important to see how they address and protect cultural liberty in very different ways. Some cultural rights theorists defend multiculturalism primarily in terms of a broadened conception of equality, parity, or fairness. Kymlicka (1995), for example, argues that immigrant groups are owed polyethnic rights, which are essentially remedial rights enabling access to the societal culture to which everyone is entitled. Similarly, Nancy Fraser (2002) defends cultural recognition on the basis of parity of participation in social life. A major limitation of these approaches is that they can entail the serious restriction of cultural liberty.

    Consider, for example, Fraser’s attempt to apply her parity argument to the French controversy over the foulard. Here the issue, she says, is whether policies forbidding Muslim girls to wear headscarves in state schools constitute unjust treatment of a religious minority. The test is whether the ban on the scarf constitutes an unjust majority communitarianism, which denies educational parity to Muslim girls. Fraser believes that this discrimination can be established without difficulty, since no analogous prohibition bars the wearing of Christian crosses in state schools; thus the current policy denies equal standing to Muslim citizens (Fraser 2002: 35). Fraser was writing here some years before the French law of February 2004, which banned all ostentatious religious symbols and garb from being worn at state schools. On her argument, Muslims in France now enjoy equal standing. The only trouble is they, like many others committed to their religious traditions, aren’t very happy about what parity has bequeathed. In this case, equality or fairness was secured at the price of individuals’ freedom of religious expression.

    There is, then, considerable wisdom in the Australian policy’s recognition of an individual right to cultural identity separate from, and independent of, the right to social justice (and protection from indirect discrimination). Barriers to cultural expression should be removed or redressed where they unfairly disadvantage some citizens, without compelling overriding justification. But a right to cultural expression stands regardless of whether everyone’s freedom to exercise it is similarly hobbled.

    In a useful distinction, Robert Goodin (2006) differentiates between protective multiculturalism, centered on securing cultural rights for minority groups, and polyglot multiculturalism, centered on expanding the range of options and benefits available for members of the majority culture. Thus far I have addressed the protective aspects of Australian multicultural policy—the rights to cultural identity and nondiscrimination. But another major dimension of the policy turns on the idea that cultural diversity is a public good that serves all Australians. This is not exactly Goodin’s polyglot multiculturalism, since the stated interest is on behalf of all Australians rather than only those belonging to the majority culture. That is, the stated interest is one of a genuine public good, not a group advantage, however dominant the group may be. Nevertheless, architects of the policy acknowledge that they needed to find ways to sell multicultural policy to mainstream Australians (e.g., Shergold 1994/95), so the difference between public and polyglot goods may be less than what it seems.

    Be this as it may, we see the public good idea implied, albeit clumsily, in the third policy dimension of economic efficiency. Thus, for example, the retention of foreign languages by immigrants is to be encouraged so as to assist Australians and Australia to compete in the global marketplace. The bald instrumentalist terms of the economic efficiency dimension might be taken to mean that the interests of individual citizens are ultimately subservient to the national project that is Australia. The National Agenda states, for example, that "All Australians should be able to develop and make use of their potential for Australia’s economic and social development (OMA 1989: 1; emphasis added). However, the policy clarifies elsewhere that the ultimate value resides in the individual: By seeking to improve the management and use of our human resources, and thereby to contribute to a sustained improvement in our standard of living, multicultural policies serve the interests of us all (OMA 1989: 26). The immigration debate has particular relevance here. One of the earlier fears expressed about multiculturalism was that the large influx of immigrants would rob established Australians of their jobs and diminish Australia’s prosperity. The economic efficiency and, in the later policies, productive diversity" dimensions transparently seek to allay some of these concerns by stressing the entrepreneurial and socioeconomic advantages of a culturally diverse workforce and society.

    Public subsidization of ethnic groups is another cultural right defended by many multiculturalists. Australian federal, state, territory, and local governments have engaged in extensive funding programs related to multiculturalism. Three broad areas of funding may be distinguished. First, Australian governments provide information to the public in many languages, either directly in government brochures or via interpreter and translator services. Multilingual explanations appear on electoral ballots, census forms, and so on. While these measures might help to sustain linguistic and cultural distinctiveness, they are best understood as attempts to integrate new Australians from non–English-speaking backgrounds and to fairly and effectively administer the business of government.

    A second area of public funding relates to community welfare and absorption matters, where governments have found community organizations to be effective—or convenient—deliverers of services to their needy members. Such measures constitute special delivery of welfare benefits rather than special benefits. Even here, governmental reliance on church and other nongovernment organizations to supply welfare services has a long pedigree in Australia, dating back to the colonial administrations in the nineteenth century (Garton 1990). This service delivery dimension, together with the traditional immigrant absorption and social justice emphases of Australian multiculturalism, may help explain why the international debate over whether multicultural policies divert attention and resources away from genuine cases of social deprivation, welfare need, and equal opportunity—the so-called recognition vs. redistribution debate (Banting and Kymlicka 2003b, 2006a; Barry 2001; Goodhart 2004; Phillips 1999)—has had little resonance in Australia.¹⁵ There has been something of this argument over Aboriginal policy, with the Howard government insisting that improving Aboriginal living conditions or practical reconciliation is more helpful than symbolic reconciliation, apologies for historical maltreatment, and the questions of treaties and self-government. There has been generalized criticism of the cost of multiculturalism, usually based on exaggerated figures (e.g., Rimmer 1988, 1991). And there has been some criticism—as put in this book by Brian Galligan and Winsome Roberts—to the effect that Australian multiculturalism has wrongly gotten caught up in questions of national identity and citizenship and should return to its original mission of immigrant absorption. However, there has been no comparable recognition vs. redistribution debate regarding Australian multiculturalism, presumably because, whatever else it may involve, so much of the policy has been about welfare, social justice, and equal opportunity.

    Finally, some multicultural public funding is culturally and community oriented. It includes funding of SBS (the multicultural television and radio broadcaster), ethnic festivals, community activities and centers, and the like. There is in the National Agenda perhaps the suggestion of a moral entitlement to such funding: All Australians should enjoy equal life chances and have equitable access to and equitable share of the resources which governments manage on behalf of the community (OMA 1989: 1). Nevertheless, the general rationale for this kind of public subsidization seems to be not that cultural minorities have a right to it, but rather that it serves the interests of all Australians (or all residents in a state, territory, or municipality). This principle became even more pronounced under the Howard government’s annual Living in Harmony grants program, where funds were allocated to community projects, on a competitive basis, that aim to promote Australian values and mutual obligation, engage the whole community and address understanding and intolerance at the community level.¹⁶ The underlying moral justification is the presumption that everyone benefits from the policy of state cultural subsidization—not only the minority members who happen to receive the assistance (as in minority rights arguments); not only the majority of a political community (as in some utilitarian justifications and polyglot multiculturalism); and not only an abstract entity such as the nation (as with national corporatism).

    Another notable feature of Australian multicultural policy is the absence of inclusion as a governing principle. This is unfortunate. As in the tricolour values of liberté, egalité, and fraternité, valorisation of brotherhood and inclusion is deemed central to a democracy of equals. One might argue that the principle of inclusion is derivative of that of equality, and thus is implicitly recognized in the Australian policy’s endorsement of social justice and equity. Some such assumption, for example, seems to inform the Rudd Labor government’s social inclusion policy, which is framed entirely in terms of addressing socioeconomic harsdships.¹⁷ However, seeing inclusion as simply derivative of equality overlooks the fact that one can enjoy equal citizenship rights and equal opportunities and still be socially alienated. It also fails to accord with Australian cultural norms. The latter famously include a strong tradition of egalitarianism and a fair go, but they also mark out a separate and even mythic place for the value of mateship, which is the quintessentially Australian sentiment of fraternity and inclusion. As Russel Ward (1958: 168) observed half a century ago, [b]y the 1880’s mateship had become such a powerful institution that often one could refuse an invitation to drink only at one’s peril. However intimate their relationship, inclusion and equality stand as independent values.¹⁸ While inclusion is surely served by stable employment, educational opportunities, access services, and support networks, it is also importantly facilitated through public rhetoric and symbolic measures (Levey 2008, 2007b).

    Two cultural rights claims often discussed by political theorists and debated in various countries are the symbolic recognition of cultural minorities in official emblems, anthems, flags, public holidays, and the like, and special political representation in the legislature.

    Australia has stopped short of the above forms of symbolically recognizing cultural minorities. Such cultural rights would presumably also apply to the dominant majority, and so some additional argument is required to explain why, in such circumstances, an established majority should not prevail at the symbolic level. Cultural rights theorists typically frame this additional argument in terms of respecting equality (e.g., Kymlicka 1995: 114–15; cf. Bader 2007). But, as a practical matter, it is not clear how one can include the images, stories, languages, and festivals of all or even most minority groups in the official paraphernalia of multicultural states. India offers a possible model in recognizing the festivals of all the major religions (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jainist, and Buddhist) as official

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